Fault Lines
Days that you feel like a beggar,
There’s not enough of you to give.
When you’re only giving out.
There is room in this house.
These moments when your heart settles,
Skies clear from this stormy weather.
When your hope meets the unknown,
And the mystery feels like home.
The walls of preservation thin.
Keep looking for redemption.
Don’t abandon what is true,
When failure draws fault lines beneath you.
Remember the way things are presently
Are not how they will always be.
There is future wait and see.
There is room in this house for you.
Rest
Held within the earth,
Destined from birth,
This is not an end,
But how we began.
When the plow,
Comes for us now.
Its in our souls, the vision of how it goes.
In the best of ways, gold nor rust can stay.
Listen for the beat, of hearts so fleeting.
The way is long at best. You just need some rest.
You just need some rest.
Sleep is the brother of death
You just need some rest.
Remember it.
Smokescreen Season
Firelight on the shape of loss and hurt and dread
Keeping with the shadow-talk until the coals are dead.
Sap the joy like syrup.
Tap the sapling tree.
Hoping there is substance to keep your motives clean.
Where are your promises now?
Actions you can’t disavow.
Hold the candle vigil for years that can’t be changed.
Making strong intention to relive all their pain.
Dredge the river waters to watch the bodies rise.
Set the funeral pyres for loves now long despised.
All of your excuses don’t afford a good reason.
Thus comes the collapse of this smokescreen season.
There’s a line I know I can see it.
It once fed me lies, but I no longer eat them.
Sending me signs but I refuse to read them,
Bringing the collapse of this smokescreen season.
Where are your promises now?
Cliff Dwelling
Graven on the edge
Of the words my Father said.
“You are all that I love.
All I’m dreaming of.”
Bare your teeth, bare your soul.
Do not forget I made you, whole.
All you ask me for,
Every good thing I have is yours.
Fire. Famine. Failure. Flood.
I drown them in the depths of love.
There is nothing life can do to cause me to care less for you.
There is nothing.
Don’t you see? Its alive in me.
Every vale and mountain,
You’ll find me in.
Don’t you see? Its alive in me.
On this you can depend,
Over and over again.
No Past
God what’s it like as a father,
Watching your children destroying each other?
Though darkness is not dark to you.
God, how do you hear them,
Everyone telling you, asking for healing?
Spirit heals all that is spirit.
Do not burn with fearful questions
They are only honest messengers
Do not burn simply for someone said
“Set yourself on fire.”
All the wrongs,
Every hurt,
All the lies used to subvert,
All the shame,
All the guilt,
Swept away as river silt.
Every falsehood every mask,
“For with him there is no past”
Doubt is but a shadow cast,
“For with him there is no past.”
There is mercy for the foundling
You have not been by him abandoned
This love carries through all your wand’ring
Written in blood; it was, it is, will be
It was, it is, will (forever) be.
Hollow Point
Torches out for revenge surely it will find them.
Unforgiveness on our lips, we become the victim.
Peace will never be achieved by hearts full of war
What if the blood you wish for, ends up being yours
Hollow point, is all your hate helping anything?
Why are we so surprised when strife begins to grow.
You reap what you sow.
Hands speak louder than your tongue,
What have you done?
Hate’s an anchor you’re tied to,
Hands speak louder than your tongue,
What have you done?
Cut yourself loose.
Hate’s an anchor you’re tied to.
You are drowning, cut yourself loose.
Empty words won’t free the hold,
Hollow point made.
Reflection
Colors woven by your artist hand,
Each one chosen (for its) mettle and bone.
So that we know what we are.
In reflection,
So that we know what You are.
Everything in open hands,
Given over to courage
There’s no wonder in our fear.
Deep is calling, do you hear?
Bring your doubts,
Call them out.
In your weakness
Strength is found.
(I’m) Overcome
Fear has no place here.
Blind ones open your eyes.
You heart is highly prized.
Listen when truth is told.
You are valuable.
This Ends With Me
Choices that are not ours,
Change our lives.
We look for who to blame,
Leading with knives.
(Desperation)
We did not have a say,
Often neither did they.
(Finds no haven)
How much hurt must you see before you say “This ends with me”?
What will you need to see before you say “This ends with me.”?
This ends with me.
We’ve seen the loss, we’ve felt the grief. Mourning those who still breathe.
No one knows the path they lead when there’s no lamp to guide their feet.
No one can see.
Watching the fall of those we love, they grow hollow
Through the cycle of “Nothing’s enough” asking what is it for?
Reminders of sacrifice, that mercy dwells with strife.
Every scar leads us back to what’s real.
Only the broken can heal.
The words that sever ties. The common thread that binds.
The truth it does reveal, only the broken can heal.
Half-Light
You make everything feel half-alive,
You make everything long for the light.
You make everything feel half-alright,
In me.
When death comes a’knocking on doors,
When my heart knows its been here before.
In the house where the windows are boarded up with fear.
When the moonlight is burning my eyes,
And the only way out is too bright,
When the worthiness of living life is far from dear.
You make all of me feel half-alright,
Enough to see hope through the night.
That the bitterness leaves with the sunlight’s growing near.
You make everything feel half-alive,
You make everything long for the light.
You make everything feel half-alright,
In me.
How do I walk into freedom with my limbs asleep?
How do I move through the finite, to eternal things?
How does my heart long for home that I’ve never seen?
How do I see past the veil of this body?
Nightingale
This does not mean darkness is all we have left.
Low sunk life, suffering, that this life means nothing.
But its death its weary of. Not living a life filled up.
This does not mean darkness is all we have left.
The edge of night reminds you when
you learned to call the light friend.
At times our edges catch, cast shadows in our minds.
It doesn’t mean that dark it all we have to find.
God does not fear questions even when we scream them.
Seek out what is honest, through all of the silence.
This does not mean darkness is all we have left.